Key Soft Skills for SEO Experts and Managers

If you’ve ever thought SEO is just about keywords and backlinks, think again. In this episode, Mads Singers highlights the often-overlooked side of SEO: soft skills. These are the skills that make people want to work with you, follow your lead, and avoid miscommunication disasters.

You’ll discover why emotional intelligence is key for managing teams and clients, how building real relationships boosts retention, and why communication might be the most important SEO skill you didn’t realize you needed.

The takeaway? SEO isn’t just about ranking; it's about relationships, communication, and balancing technical expertise with human interaction. Plus, multitasking? It’s overrated. Mads shows you how to focus and actually drive results.

Connect with Mads on LinkedIn

Visit Mads Singers' website

Join SEO Mastery Summit

Follow him on X/Twitter 

👉🏻Watch the full video on our YouTube channel

Oleksandra Khilova [OK]: Hello guys. Welcome to our new podcast episode. And today I have an awesome guest, Mads Singers. It's one of the most famous SEO coaches in our industry. You also may know Matts with his SEO Mastery Summit Conference. Mads, welcome, and thank you for joining us today. 

Mads Singers [MS]: Thank you very much for having me. I'm super excited to have a chat and yeah, share some knowledge.

[OK]: Let's discuss soft skills in SEO. How do you define soft skills for SEO?

[MS]: Well, let's start by saying that soft skills are lacking. For me, when I think of soft skills, I think of EQ or emotional intelligence, and I think of communication. It's not just about the ability to say something; where most people go wrong, and many SEOs do this a lot, is they say something but don’t understand that what you say doesn’t matter. It’s what the other person hears that matters. So, while you might say the technically right thing, if the person you’re talking to doesn’t understand it or misinterprets it, that’s your fault, right? So fundamentally, core communication skills — the ability to communicate, like we’re doing now on video — are crucial.

In the world of SEO, many people prefer to write chat messages and emails instead of talking to people. One of the core essentials for becoming relatively successful, at least, is actually developing communication skills. If you’re a really smart SEO but can’t take what’s in your head and communicate it to the people around you, you’ll only go so far, right? For me, communication skills and emotional intelligence — the ability to connect with people — are key. I mean, I spent 15 years learning how to smile. I’m slightly better at it now, but these are the things that make a big difference when you’re dealing with other humans.

The reality is that many SEOs just want to sit and do SEO, which is fine if your goal is to have a full-time job or a busy life. But if you really want to be successful — well, success is obviously your own definition — but if you want to build a big company and make a lot of money, then you definitely need to learn some of these skills.

[OK]: Today, I would like to put a small emphasis on soft skills for SEO in-house, in agencies, and for SEO consultants. There are three different types of skills. In an agency, you need to wear many hats, especially if you are a solopreneur, because you have to be good at hard skills since you’re the only team member doing all the work. You also need to be a good sales manager and have strong communication skills to build your network and develop new relationships. I think there is a big difference between in-house SEO specialists and those in agencies. In-house, you work within a team and have limited responsibilities, which are measured by your KPIs and business goals provided by the company.

[MS]: To an extent, I agree. But the thing is, even when you're working in-house, like if you're the head of SEO, one of the challenges you'll face many times is having someone disagree with you. You might come up with a strategy and think, "Yay! This is what we should do!" But then you have a manager, a developer, or someone else saying, "That shouldn't be done," or "That can't be done." The point is, if you don't have good communication skills or haven't built strong relationships, even in-house, you often won't be able to deliver the results you’re capable of. It's easy to say, "I can't deliver because these people are blocking me." But at the end of the day, success isn't about excuses. Success is the ability to deliver results, no matter the circumstances. That's the key. Where most people go wrong in-house is that in-house environments are often just as political and challenging as dealing with clients.

[OK]: Anyway, in-house, you should have strong communication skills because you deal with many stakeholders and need to get approval for numerous things. As you mentioned, this includes developers, UX design departments, etc. It's important to build connections between those departments and demonstrate that SEO input is valuable. For example, you should ask for SEO-related changes to your website, even if others think they aren't that important.

Now, speaking about soft skills in general, Google changes so fast these days, with so many updates, that being a good technical SEO alone is not enough. To be honest, this is just my opinion — don’t take it the wrong way if you disagree — but I believe you can’t be a great technical SEO without some sort of technical degree. Knowing how Core Web Vitals work isn't enough; you also need to understand Python, JavaScript, and other technical areas. You can delegate some of the technical work, but I think the most important part of being an SEO is selling the strategy itself. That’s the foundation of any project: if you believe in your strategy and can sell it, that’s when your journey really begins.

Many of us have created full strategies, but a year later, they don’t match the original document. We often change them because SEO is a long-term game. What do you think? Should we also be good sales managers?

[MS]: Well, I mean, the ideal people are very good at many things. The reality is we all have certain strengths and weaknesses, right? So, if you are naturally super introverted, learning to become great at sales can be very difficult because great sales are often about being assertive, and those traits don’t always align. However, everyone can learn to communicate better. Communication skills are something that everyone can develop.

What I would say about sales is, let’s say you want to run an agency, and you’re very good at SEO but extremely introverted. My recommendation is either to find a business partner who is sales-focused or to hire someone who is skilled in that area. If you know someone good at sales, bring them on board. One of the biggest issues I see in many SEO companies is that the person is trying to do everything themselves.

What I typically tell people is that SEO is often one of the least important things in the world of SEO. What I mean by that is the most successful SEO professionals aren’t necessarily the best SEOs. The people who make the most money in the SEO industry aren’t always the best at SEO. The reality is for $5,000 a month, you can hire a decent SEO.

[MS]: Right. So the thing is, hiring someone to do SEO is often cheaper than finding someone who's great at other aspects of the business, right? Where many SEOs get stuck is they want to do the SEO themselves, striving for perfection and doing everything the right way. However, the problem is that the SEO piece is often the easiest part to delegate. I've worked with people who grew an agency from 0 to $200K in the first year just by focusing on sales. A very good salesperson who understood enough about SEO found an agency to white-label the services and spent all day, every day, connecting with people and making sales. He made significant money within the first 12 months because he focused on one core thing.

One of the big problems many SEOs face is they make one sale and then spend all their time and energy delivering the service and making the client happy. But the issue is, once that client leaves, they're left with no clients and no money. The key to any business is to keep lead generation going constantly. You can never stop generating leads.

If you do stop lead generation, you put yourself in a tough spot. Some people end up with the opposite problem, thinking they have too many leads. But really, there’s no such thing as too many leads. If you have more leads than you can handle, all you need to do is increase your prices. For example, if you can only handle ten clients but have 20 people wanting your services, you raise your prices so that the quality of your leads improves, and your business becomes more profitable overall.

The reality is that most businesses start with sales and marketing — attracting leads, making sales, and then focusing on delivery. SEOs often do it the other way around, focusing so much on delivery that they neglect sales and marketing.

[OK]: Yeah, that's true. I had that experience when I tried to do everything — managing technical SEO, leading the SEO team, being a designer, and acting as a sales manager. So yeah, it doesn't work. But what about retention? Do you see any connection between soft skills and retention? Is it important to improve our soft skills for retention?

[MS]: The number one reason clients leave most agencies is poor communication. A lot of the time, agencies say, "Oh, but we deliver great results, and this client left. They're stupid." But I tell them, no, the client didn’t leave because you didn’t deliver results — they left because you didn’t communicate well. As an SEO, when you look at the numbers, you understand what's happening. However, if a client doesn’t hear from you for a month, they don’t know you're working. They may not understand what you’re doing or even that you're doing anything at all. Suddenly, they're thinking, "We're paying money to this person or company, but we don’t hear from them, so let's stop paying."

One of the biggest things you can do to increase retention is not just to communicate more but to communicate better. It’s about building great relationships with your clients so they understand not just what you're doing but that you care about the relationship. People are significantly less likely to leave if you have a strong relationship with them, whether you’re the account manager or someone else in the company.

[MS]: As an SEO company, whether you’re an account manager or in another role, building relationships with your customers is important, right? It's about figuring out what they're into and what they care about. Do they have kids? Do they play golf? Do they go hunting? What do they do in their free time? When is their birthday? On their birthday, send them something relevant to who they are, right?

And yes, this has nothing to do with SEO directly. 

When you show people that you care, they are significantly more likely to stick around, send you more clients, and give you more referrals.

[OK]: Yeah, and I would also like to add from my own experience that building relationships with clients isn’t just about delivering tasks. Sometimes, it's even good to make mistakes and tell clients that you’re human, too, and that mistakes happen. Sometimes, the client makes mistakes as well. In these cases, it actually becomes a good part of the relationship because SEO can’t be perfect all the time due to many factors — developers, updates, budget constraints, etc.

We don’t need to be friends necessarily, but at least a good partner or ally. First of all, it's your own brand and reputation. They can recommend you to other clients, and you can work with them for many years. So, even if you’re not the most technical person, if you have strong communication skills, it's a huge benefit.

I’d also like to ask about a stereotype. I’ve spoken to many people from the U.S. and the UK, and I’ve noticed that having a degree seems to be a requirement when companies try to hire SEOs. From my perspective, in Ukraine, it’s not as important because we have a different mentality. When I was looking for jobs in the U.S., however, it seemed like a requirement. What’s your opinion on this? Is it really that important? I think some companies might lose out on potentially great people because of this requirement.

[MS]: It's not about losing out. The way it works, and this applies to most jobs, is that degrees aren't always important. The reality is, in most cases, people evaluate performance. I'm not saying that's always the case, but in most situations, if you can show someone that you've done exactly what they need — whether it's for a job or a client — that's what matters. For example, if you approach a dentist looking for SEO services and show them that you've helped four of their competitors achieve the results they want, there's no better sales document than that. It's the same when you're applying for a job.

Take me, for instance. I'm probably one of the most uneducated people you’ll meet — I nearly completed high school — but no one has ever asked about that. I've worked in many management roles in large corporations, and no one cared about my education because they looked at the results I delivered.

So yes, in some cases, even in Ukraine or elsewhere, you might be in a situation where there are a lot of candidates. What I teach from a hiring perspective is that when you have many applicants, you need to find ways to narrow down the list. For example, if I have a job with 200 candidates, I might look at certain skills. All things being equal, if someone types faster, there’s a higher likelihood they’ll be successful in that role.

[MS]: That doesn't mean that everyone who types slowly is necessarily bad. But if I take the 100 fastest typers and the 100 slowest typers, everything else being equal, there's a higher likelihood that a very fast typer will be more successful because it indicates they are better at working on computers. And if they're working on computers, spending eight hours a day typing faster is more likely to lead to better results.

The concept of education is similar, right? If you have a lot of candidates — let's say I'm hiring a marketing person, like an SEO is essentially a marketing role — if I have 100 candidates, I'm not going to interview all of them. But if I see that 50 of them have a marketing degree, everything else being equal, there's a higher likelihood that the people with the degree know something or have tried something that those without the degree haven’t. Similarly, if someone has worked as an SEO for five years compared to someone who has never worked as an SEO, the person with experience is more likely to be successful, right?

So that's generally how I evaluate things. In some countries, for example, in Denmark, where I’m from, if you want to be a bin man, you need a 3- or 4-year education just to empty bins.

[MS]: So, you know, there are many countries where people are more focused on education than in the US. But I think the fundamentals in most roles are showing and learning how to deliver results. The biggest thing I would say is I never apply for jobs by just sending a resume to some random mailbox. I don’t fundamentally believe that’s the best way to get jobs. If you’re one of 200 resumes, the likelihood of getting noticed is very slim.

What I always advise people to do is, if there’s a company you want to work for or a particular job you’re interested in, find them. Get to know them. Show up where they are. Literally track them on social media, find out what events they’re attending, or figure out how you can meet them in person. Do something different.

For example, if a company is hiring an SEO, you could do an audit for them and say, “Hey, I saw you’re looking for an SEO. I spent 30 minutes doing a quick deep-dive audit of your website, and here are the main things I noticed you could improve.” This approach makes you stand out. If you just send a resume like everyone else, you're unlikely to get the job.

[OK]: Exactly. There’s huge competition in the market. A lot of people are scared of AI technologies, and it's true that many companies have laid off a significant number of salespeople this year. While it’s not a massive shift, the job market in sales has decreased by at least 20% this year. On the other hand, digital PR jobs have increased, so we can conclude that people are currently seeking digital PR specialists. But never mind that for now.

I’d also like to ask you about clear communication and transparency between coworkers and clients. It’s a huge problem to admit when you don't know something. How can we build a process to handle this without losing our reputation? It’s a common situation when you're doing some SEO work, and you really don’t know how to proceed. How should we handle it? Is it okay to tell our colleagues or clients that we don’t know but will research the solution? How do we deal with situations when people are afraid to admit they don’t know something?

[MS]: One of the biggest issues for SEOs is that they're afraid of making mistakes and even more afraid of admitting them. Often, when mistakes happen, as you said earlier, it's better to tell someone, "Hey, I did this, but I should have done that. I'm going to fix it." Most of the time, SEOs and even CEOs hide from their mistakes because they don't want to admit they made them. They think it makes them look weak. But it’s not about looking weak or human — it's about building trust. When people know you own up to your mistakes, it makes you more valuable to them. They know that if a problem arises, you will be honest and tell them. It’s much worse to work with people when you don’t know if there’s a problem, and suddenly things explode. That’s a terrible scenario.

The benefit is making sure you communicate clearly. To answer your specific question on how to communicate clearly and admit, "I don’t know," it’s actually very simple. Just say, "I don’t know, but I’m going to figure it out." The issue is that many managers feel they always have to know the answer. So, when an employee asks them something, they answer confidently, even if they don’t know, because they feel they should as the manager.

[MS]: What I mean by that is the best managers focus on managing instead of doing. These people don’t necessarily need to know the details of what their staff is doing. They should be good at managing and communicating with their team to get the best results. They shouldn't be in a position where they feel they need to tell their staff how to do their jobs. That’s typically where you find the highest-quality managers — those who don't need to know every detail.

One of the big issues in many companies is that when you promote people who are experts in their previous roles (because they were your best performers), they often get stuck. They don’t truly become managers and end up micromanaging because they know the work so well. From a higher-level perspective, when you're unsure about something, just admit it. Say, "Hey, I don't know, but I'll go find out." Or if you're communicating with your staff, and they ask you a question, you can say, "I don't know. Why don't you go figure it out?"

[OK]: Or you can say, "I don't know, but what do you think? How would you handle this situation?" For example, it's also a good practice not to ignore juniors' questions but to help them figure things out on their own.

[MS]: Learn how to think. When you ask them questions, they learn how to think.

[OK]: Now, let's talk about communication. We're fine with communication for now. We know the main points. But when an SEO specialist becomes the head of SEO or a team lead, a new challenge arises: how to delegate properly. This is a common issue when you're good at what you do but struggle to delegate and teach others on your team. I don’t think creating a massive knowledge base is the solution because, honestly, not many people use them, and it often feels like a waste of time. What recommendations can you give to people who are really afraid of teaching others?

[MS]: The key misunderstanding here is that delegation is not about teaching. Unfortunately, many people online teach that when you manage people, you have to figure out what to do, put it into a process, and then hand it off to someone else.

Let’s say you’re good at link building, or let’s say I want to teach you how to do link building. You don’t know link building, right? Instead of sitting down and saying, "Do this, do this, and do this," giving you tasks one by one, what I want to do instead is say, "Hey, Oleksandra, I really love the way you communicate with people, and I need your help with sending out a lot of emails because we need to handle this link building project. As the head of SEO, I’m too busy to do it myself, so I really need your help. I want you to take full responsibility for our link building efforts in this company."

[OK]: Then you give me the value. Right now, I give you...

[MS]: I give you the responsibility. And then I do something very important, which is to give you specific goals. For example, I might say, "Our goal is to build a minimum of 50 links per month within a certain quality standard." We have a set of criteria to determine if a link is good. So, the goal is to build at least 50 quality links per month. Now, here’s the process we’ve been using, and I’m happy to show you how we do it. But your responsibility is to ensure we hit that goal.

It’s not just about following the process. If I teach you the process and it doesn’t get the desired result, that’s my problem. But if I give you ownership and set a goal, and you try different things that aren’t working, then I’ll come to you and say, "If it’s not working, I need you to figure out what else we can do. We need to hit the goal." You want to give people areas of responsibility that they can own. Initially, you might be better at the task, but if they are focused full-time on, for example, link building, over time, they will improve and eventually surpass you because they spend all day, every day, focused on it.

The problem is, if you don’t delegate responsibility, you end up answering all the questions and staying better than your employees because you remain the expert. But when you give someone full responsibility and measure the output, you don't need to focus so much on how they do it — just whether they’re achieving the desired results. If they’re not delivering, like if you expect ten links but they only deliver six, then sit down with them in a one-on-one meeting and say, "We need ten links; what do we need to do to reach that target?"

This is how successful people become successful — because someone trusted them, gave them ownership, and held them accountable. I don’t know your exact background, but I bet at some point, a client or a manager came to you and said, "We don’t know how to do this SEO thing. Can you handle it for us?" No one becomes great at what they do just because someone handed them a pile of processes and said, "Do this."

[OK]: Yeah, exactly. And by doing it this way — not just teaching but giving responsibility to your team — they start asking questions and thinking for themselves, becoming much more involved in the process. Take link building, for example. It's a big problem when you try to teach by just training. If I show someone, "Here’s how I do a pivot table for backlink analysis," they might not remember the process, and they won't be able to teach it later. But if I ask them to do a pivot table for backlink analysis, they’ll start asking questions like, "How do I do this pivot table?" because they’ve never done it before. So, yeah, I think it’s a good approach overall.

[OK]: Another problem you mentioned is that many SEOs are introverts. Nowadays, we live in a time when everyone has a LinkedIn profile, starts building their personal brand, and shares case studies. But what about people who really don’t like sharing on social media? That’s the first question.

The second question is about communication within international teams. I think it’s important, especially now, as Ukrainians, for example, are starting to build their careers in foreign companies. We all have different historical perspectives, backgrounds, and cultural experiences. How can we acknowledge those differences and communicate more effectively in such cases?

[MS]: I would say a couple of key things. First, from a high-level perspective, when it comes to international communication and communication between teams, you need to build relationships. Obviously, a certain level of language skills is required. From a company standpoint, you probably want to ensure that there is a certain level of language proficiency among the people you hire. It doesn't matter what language it is, but if people don't speak the same language, it becomes very hard to manage them or be managed. So, you want to make sure that language skills are present.

Different cultures and different places have different ways of communicating. The two things I always talk about are learning to understand people and human behavior, and understanding how different people think, how they communicate, and how they want to be approached. Some people are straightforward — just tell them what you want and move on. Others want to sit and talk for 40 minutes about unrelated things.

Some people want all the details, but they need to be super relevant, and they want to know everything that ever happened regarding the matter at hand. Some just enjoy listening to you talk. People are all different. Learning to understand personalities was one of my biggest breakthroughs. I'm a huge introvert myself, but I’ve learned to understand people. It took me many years to do so.

When I was 18, I knew I had to learn how to talk to people, so every day, on the bus to and from work, I would sit down next to someone I didn’t know and just say, "Hi." I did that for a couple of months. After a few months, I became braver and started saying, "Hi, how are you?" Fortunately, in the UK, people don't always expect an answer to that. Eventually, some people started talking to me. Was it difficult? Very difficult. Was it uncomfortable? Exceptionally uncomfortable. It wasn’t easy at all.

[MS]: But I understood that if I wanted to succeed, I needed basic things as a human being. For example, I moved to a different country when I was 18, so it was about learning how to make new friends, finding a potential partner, and communicating with people at work. Communication is key. I realized that if I wanted to succeed, I needed to be able to communicate — that was a core aspect.

So, I put in a lot of time and effort. After I became somewhat decent at communication, I eventually started with something called Toastmasters, which focuses on public speaking. I was constantly aware that I had to keep challenging myself with communication to improve. That’s one of the reasons why I’m a pretty decent communicator today.

Whether you see me speak on stage or meet me at an event, people generally have a great experience when they communicate with me. As I said before, you can be the smartest person in the world, but if you can’t take what’s in your head and effectively share it with the people around you, then it doesn’t matter.

[OK]: You also just mentioned public speaking. How can we implement some basic lessons from public speaking to improve our soft skills at work?

[MS]: The key thing I learned is that something like Toastmasters is fantastic because, in the beginning, I thought it was just about public speaking, but it’s not. What I learned at Toastmasters was, first, how to use my body language. I used to be the person who would just walk around and stand awkwardly while speaking, and it took me a long time to realize how ineffective that was. The same goes for smiling, keeping eye contact, and using hand gestures effectively. I got a ton of feedback on those aspects early on, and I would never have improved if I hadn’t done something like Toastmasters.

Another thing I learned was how to be concise. When you're standing on a stage, and you have ten minutes to deliver a message, you need to take something big (which you could talk about for hours) and distill it into something meaningful that fits in those ten minutes. Many people don’t speak up because they’re afraid, while others speak up but talk too much without being concise, which can annoy the people around them.

So, learning how to be concise and how to think in a way that communicates your point effectively is essential. Learning to speak up is equally important. Many introverts, when sitting in a meeting with ten other people or on a Zoom call, may have something valuable to say but feel uncomfortable speaking up. This is a problem because if you don't speak up, people don’t know what you’re thinking, and your contribution becomes less valuable. If you want to succeed, you need to make sure you share your opinions and knowledge when it makes sense and when it's useful.

[OK]: Yeah, I think it's also important to note that you don’t have to be a native speaker to understand the tone of voice of the people you're speaking with, especially when discussing strategy approval. For example, when I see a CEO who is nervous about strategy and budget questions, I think that they probably don't believe in themselves. So why should I believe in them? Why should I invest my money and development time, etc.?

It's also important to work on your tone of voice in general and practice how you speak. No one wants to listen to someone say, "Hello. Today we are going to discuss our strategy" in a monotone. No one cares, and it comes across as noise. You need to be engaging and capture your team's attention. They should listen to you and not be distracted by their phones during your talk. I think it's a good sign when someone is fully engaged and not just typing messages while you're speaking.

As for multitasking, I don’t believe in it. Do you?

[MS]: Well, the concept is flawed, right? I mean, you can only physically do one thing at a time. If you keep jumping between three things, you're just slowing yourself down. But sometimes that’s what happens, right? I don’t think multitasking is a big thing. Actually, it's a great point. One of the biggest issues people have is time management. Everyone talks to me about it, asking, "How do I get better at time management?" They think it's about how to do more things in less time, especially when they have a to-do list of 700 items.

But the reality is that 95% of people are too busy doing too many things that aren’t the right things. For example, as an SEO, I work with many agencies, and when I ask what they do when onboarding a new client, they show me a checklist of 400 things to check on the website. That process takes three weeks for a full-time person. But really, five or ten of those things actually make a difference. If you start with just those, you’ll be better off.

The point is, success in life is about prioritization. Success in business is about prioritization. That's why, as I mentioned earlier with sales and marketing, if you deprioritize them, you’re going to have a problem — if not tomorrow, then the next day or the day after. Most success in any job role comes from learning how to prioritize.

As an SEO, it’s not about saying, "We need to get all this stuff done." It’s about identifying the things most likely to move the needle. Once you've done those and the needle hasn’t moved enough, the next question is, "What’s the next most likely thing to move the needle?" But most people just follow a big to-do list of tasks they’d like to accomplish at some point. 

[OK]: Yeah, I agree. For example, when I'm conducting audits for my clients, especially on the technical side, let’s take core web vitals as an example. We might have some core web vitals issues, but the business owner doesn’t care. What does that mean? It means they don’t want to be involved in this problem. So, the best thing I can do is prioritize these issues based on their business potential.

For example, we may have many technical issues, but the most important part of the audit is how these issues impact the business. I’m not sure that achieving a perfect score on core web vitals is necessarily important, but fixing JavaScript that affects rendering is crucial. So your audit can be very concise, like a few sentences or key points, and that’s it — you’ve delivered your insights.

Of course, it’s nice to have a template customized for your clients but to be honest, the business doesn’t care about the details. They just want to see the value of your work.

[MS]: The biggest thing is that I've worked with many clients who used to focus on complicated reports, keywords, traffic, and so on. The problem is, more often than not, this gets them into trouble. What happens is sometimes random, irrelevant keywords drop off, the number of keywords decreases, and then you start getting questions. Suddenly, you're spending time on things that don’t really matter. Instead, just give the client one page with two key numbers on it: "You paid us this much. We made you this much."

If you can track the impact of SEO, like in e-commerce or working with ETN, it becomes straightforward. If you can show a report that says, "You paid us $5,000, and we made you $20,000," the only question that follows is, "Are you ready to pay me more so I can make you even more?" And the answer is almost always yes.

The problem is that SEOs are often too focused on keywords and traffic, assuming others care about those metrics. In reality, business owners care about making money. They care about leads and sales. That’s what truly matters to them.

[OK]: Yeah, and a lot of SEOs, unfortunately, forget that no one else speaks their technical language. It’s often difficult for others to understand what they’re talking about. For example, what is a core web vitals issue? Why should the business owner care and spend time discussing it?

[MS]: It's a great scenario. If you look at how many SEOs have spent so much time improving website speed and the actual SEO improvements from it, you’ll see that billions of dollars have likely been wasted trying to improve some unnecessary metric.

[OK]: Yeah, I think sometimes it's hard to stay focused on the primary goal because you're constantly overthinking new strategies, updates, technical features, and tasks. So, in general, what can you recommend to SEOs to help them stay focused on the most important things?

[MS]: That's a really good book called The One Thing, and it presents a simple concept: if you can only do one thing today, what’s the one thing you could do that would make the biggest difference? You can break that down. Let’s say you have five websites you're working on. You can ask yourself each day, "What’s one thing I can do on this site that would make a big difference? What's one thing I can do today that would make a big impact?" By asking yourself that question, you also learn how to prioritize.

The problem is, when you’re used to doing everything all the time, you never really learn how to prioritize because you don't actually know what works. When you make ten changes, you don’t know which of the ten actually worked. You just know that all ten combined worked, but you don’t know if it was one, five, or eight of them that made the improvement.

As for the hiring process, it's a huge challenge to hire a new CEO. In interviews, we often focus on background, case studies, and experience, but many of us forget the importance of building relationships. Being in good relationships is key. How can we identify red flags during the interview process to determine whether someone would be a good fit, even if they aren’t highly experienced?

[MS]: Have the person talk for 15 minutes with two or three staff members they’ll be working with and see what impression they leave. If you have someone who communicates well or, on the flip side, someone who comes across as awkward or odd, this is a good way to gauge it. So, get the candidate to meet with a few others in the company that they will be working with. Say, "Hey, have a 15-minute chat with them." Ask the candidate to talk about the job or give some information about the company and see how they interact. Afterward, ask the team, "What was your impression of this person? Is this someone you would want to work with based on your initial impression?"

[OK]: Unfortunately, in most cases, it seems like HR managers prepare some standard questions and send them to your previous colleagues. Then, those people might write to you saying, "Hey, I just received a message asking for feedback about you."

[MS]: That's only part of the process, right? As a company and as a hiring manager, if you're an SEO hiring another SEO, it's your responsibility to make sure you're hiring the right person. So yes, there are HR referral processes and other procedures in the background, but as a manager, you want the best person to work with you, and it’s up to you to figure out how to find that person.

[OK]: What do you think about the test period in a company? I mean, generally, it's about 3 to 6 months, but is it okay to fire someone after just one day if, for example, you feel there’s no connection?

[MS]: Most of the time, you can't do this for every role, but in most roles, set a goal for each of the first three months. For example, say, "Your goal as a new employee for the first month is to deliver X, for the second month to deliver Y, and for the third month to deliver Z." This gives them clear expectations of what they need to achieve, which is helpful for a new employee who may not fully understand what’s expected of them.

Secondly, it provides you, as the manager, with a framework to assess them. By the end of the first month, if the person didn’t deliver as expected, you can ask yourself, "Do I believe this person will improve, or is it time to let them go?" The issue is, it’s easy to wait three or six months, but that could result in a lot of opportunity cost if they’re not the right fit. Often, within one or two months, you’ll have enough information to know whether the person will be great or if it's time to say goodbye.

[OK]: We haven't discussed another important aspect of soft skills. So far, we've talked about how you can perform, but what about protecting ourselves? It's not a popular topic, but sometimes clients can be really toxic. For example, they might message you on WhatsApp at 3:00 a.m., asking why their website isn't ranking at the top yet. How can we be polite and set boundaries between clients and ourselves? How can we protect ourselves?

[MS]: Protecting yourself? I’m not sure that’s the right way to think about it. The way I would approach it is by asking: what are the challenges you're facing in the business? For example, if one challenge is that clients expect something, and when they don’t get it, they complain, then the number one priority should be setting clear expectations.

When onboarding a client, how do you make sure their expectations are set in terms of how quickly they’ll see results, how communication will happen, and so on? This is where many companies fail — they don’t explain these things upfront. If you sit down with the client and say, "Okay, here’s our plan. We’re going to do these things, and after two weeks, we’ll have a call to update you on what we’ve done," the client then has a clear expectation of what's happening.

What makes people most unhappy and frustrated is not knowing what's going on or why something is happening. You might have a clear internal process, but if it hasn’t been communicated to the client, it’s hard for them to understand. The single most important thing to address this issue is ensuring clear communication with the client and setting expectations around deliverables and how you'll communicate.

[MS]: For example, you could say to a customer, "Yes, we will answer emails within 48 hours." This means if they send an email, it could take up to two days for a reply. If you set that expectation upfront and they know this, it's usually okay. However, if you don't set the expectation and your internal process is to reply within two days, but you don’t communicate that to the customer, they might get upset. For instance, if they send an email and a day and a half goes by without a response, they may think you're ignoring them. Again, this comes down to setting expectations.

A lot of times, agencies think, "We know it will take a while," so they cross their fingers and avoid calling the client, hoping they don’t complain too much. Eventually, they deliver results, but even then, they may not communicate well. Once again, it comes down to communication. Happiness, even for clients, is a simple formula: Reality minus expectations equals happiness. The core of expectation setting is really about happiness. If you make a promise and don’t keep it, you should expect the other person to be unhappy because you failed to deliver on that promise.

[OK]: In most cases, the secret to our success in working with clients is clear and transparent communication with all stakeholders.

[MS]: Here's the thing: if you respond to a client at 2 a.m. today but are asleep tomorrow, what happens? The client might start expecting you to always respond at 2 a.m. Be clear in your communication process, your review process, and your deliverables. For example, if you say, "Two weeks from now, on Friday, we will deliver your new website," and at any point, you realize the website won't be ready, don't wait until Friday to say, "It will be ready on Monday."

The sooner you communicate, the more time the client has to make necessary adjustments if needed. Waiting until the last minute is always risky. For instance, imagine I go to the gym, and I’m told it opens at 9 a.m., but the person who is supposed to open it isn’t available. If I’m standing there at 9 a.m. and the gym isn’t open, I’ll be unhappy. However, if someone had called me a week before and told me, "The gym will open at 10 a.m. this Friday instead of 9 a.m.," I’d be less upset because I’d be prepared.

[OK]: Yeah, I agree with you. It's really important, especially when it comes to meetings. I hate it when people cancel a call at the last minute, even though they knew they were busy in advance. If you know you're unavailable, just cancel it a day before. It would be much better that way.

Okay, I think we've covered the most important questions we prepared for you. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience. I’d like to ask you one last question to uplift people: What recommendations can you give to SEOs on staying motivated? SEO is a long-term game, and sometimes it’s hard to see results right away. You can't get results in one day — it doesn't work that way. What recommendations can you give to help people stay motivated?

[MS]: Set long-term goals? I mean, the reality is, and this is true of the human population nowadays, there's a problem with dopamine addiction, right? People are so used to opening Instagram, posting a picture, getting a lot of likes, and feeling good. The thing is, a lot of things that are worth doing take a lot of time. If you want to become a great public speaker, it takes time. If you want to build a big business, it takes time. If you want to get an education, it takes time. So, most things worth doing take time.

From a motivational standpoint, the way I motivate myself, at least, is by focusing on the output I'm looking for. Why am I trying to become a good SEO, or why am I trying to deliver good results? For example, when I work with clients, I do it because I like making positive changes in the world. I know that when I coach people to be better leaders and managers, the world becomes a better place. Most people have bad bosses, and if I can help them have a much better boss, then a lot of people in the world will be happier. Honestly, that’s enough reward for me to stay motivated and keep doing what I’m doing.

[OK]: I would just like to add that it's important to be thankful. Say "thank you" as much as possible because it's not only about your job. You need to express gratitude to all of your colleagues and clients. It's a huge part of building strong relationships.

[MS]: People are motivated by different things. Some are very motivated by a pat on the back or a simple "thank you," while others don't care at all. People can be motivated by a wide variety of things. But learning to appreciate people in general is always a good thing.

[OK]: For me, it's a good practice to reflect when I feel worn out by the process. I try to write down all the good things I’ve accomplished. Sometimes, when you're working as a CEO, you don’t see results for a long time. So, just write down everything you’ve done, reflect on it, and try to be thankful, at least to yourself, for what you've achieved.

I think it's important because we live in an era where everyone appears so successful on LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, etc. Everyone talks about case studies and how they increased something by a thousand percent. Because of this, we have the illusion that everyone is successful, but we often forget that behind this success are many mistakes.

[MS]: My favorite example is about relationships. Everyone feels like everyone else's relationship is amazing, and no one else ever fights. They just seem to have a perfect life. But in your relationship, you sometimes fight, so you think your relationship is bad. But here's the thing: people generally only share the good stuff.

[OK]: Thank you very much. Please like, subscribe, and comment on this episode. See you in the next video. Thank you!

[MS]: Thank you very much for having me. It was awesome to be here.